When, in 1914, the designers of the New York General Post Office inscribed in stone the words that became the United States Postal Service’s motto – “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds” – they clearly did…

President Trump has been challenging the integrity of mail-in ballots for months despite having frequently used them to cast his own votes — much as countless Americans have done largely without incident since the Civil War. Now it’s becoming clear how he hopes to close the chasm between this rhetoric and the reality of a system that works just fine: by undermining it himself.

Postponing elections is what autocracies do. On Friday, Hong Kong’s leader, Carrie Lam, announced a delay to September’s planned legislative council (LegCo) elections. Ms. Lam cited the coronavirus public health emergency as her justification. Yet the real reason is Hong Kong’s political emergency. Hong Kong’s elections have been postponed because even with its very limited democracy, Ms. Lam and the Chinese government are afraid the voters will choose a LegCo with greater sympathy for the protests.

One of the hallmarks of Donald Trump’s presidency is his misuse of power to advance his political cause. He had peaceful protesters forcibly cleared from Lafayette Square so he could walk from the White House to a nearby church for a photo op. He claimed emergency powers to fund border wall construction that Congress refused to approve. And he leveraged the nation’s foreign policy muscle in a failed bid to pressure the president of Ukraine to discredit former Vice President Joe Biden.

Early in my stint on the News-Sentinel’s editorial board, county officials came to lobby for the newspaper’s support of a proposed new tax.

President Donald Trump’s plan to deploy federal law-enforcement officers in cities gripped by protests has so far been a thoroughgoing failure. That isn’t stopping the administration from doubling down.

In a stunning overreach, President Donald Trump’s administration ordered federal agents to police Portland and Chicago protests. This perversion of the federal duty to provide help and stability has provoked righteous anger.

Honest self-reflection begets growth

Few life stories are as humbling as that of John Lewis, a civil rights icon and longtime Democratic congressman from Georgia who died Friday at age 80.

In this time of national nervousness, with pandemic fears and civil unrest widening our already vast political divide, I am just one of the little people waiting for the change our leaders have promised.

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“Indiana” has to go, so we’ll need to come up with a new name for the state.

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The nation could well be entering an especially dangerous period in Donald Trump’s presidency. His poll numbers are embarrassingly low for an incumbent seeking reelection, even some of his loyal supporters question his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, and the economy he had planned to ride into a second term has been battered by shuttered businesses and stay-at-home orders.

America was in serious need of a unifying message on the weekend it commemorated the Declaration of Independence. The nation was in a state of anxiety from a pandemic that has claimed 130,000 lives and is still surging, a reeling economy that threw millions out of work, and a reckoning of th…

Ever eager to exploit a cultural rift, President Donald Trump deployed troops and federal officers, and signed an executive order last week, to safeguard aging relics of America's slave-ridden past because "the left-wing mob is trying to demolish our heritage."

The nation is five months and more than 120,000 lives into its worst disease outbreak in a century and, short of a vaccine or cure, only a few effective tools remain for staving off new coronavirus infections.

Amid nearly comprehensive national disarray, a glimmer of hope: Last week, the Senate passed a landmark bill establishing permanent funding to preserve America’s public lands and alleviate a huge maintenance backlog at national parks. The measure is popular, bipartisan and right on the merit…

U.S. District Judge Richard Jones acted wisely in barring Seattle Police from using tear gas and other forceful crowd-control measures against peaceful demonstrators. His eloquent ruling June 12 showed keen attention to the urgency of demands for racial justice and the constitutional rights …

To Donald Trump’s harshest critics — indeed to much of the nation — the president’s ongoing support from a devoted base is bewildering.

Days after a white police officer killed a pleading black man by kneeling on his neck, a prominent American gave voice to the black community’s anguish: “Racism in America is like dust in the air. It seems invisible — even if you’re choking on it — until you let the sun in. Then you see it’s everywhere. As long as we keep shining that light, we have a chance of cleaning it wherever it lands.”

By rejecting President Trump’s attempt to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, the Supreme Court provided an unexpected lifeline to roughly 650,000 undocumented immigrants, known as Dreamers, who were facing the threat of deportation. Congress should seize the opportunity …

The fatal and thoroughly needless police shooting of Rayshard Brooks late Friday, June 12 in a Wendy’s parking in Atlanta makes it harder to counter the growing “Defund the Police” movement, which argues not for reform but for largely replacing armed law enforcement.

Our bodies are naturally wired to feel emotion, but it’s how you process these emotions that makes all the difference.

National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell may have just been trying to score PR points with players and the public this month when he tweeted out a statement condemning systemic racism, acknowledging that there would be no NFL without Black players and encouraging players to “speak…

In the three decades since the beating of unarmed black motorist Rodney King — the first proof of unequal police treatment captured on video and blasted across the country — law enforcement departments have remained all too powerful, racially biased and virtually unchecked, despite repeated attempts at reform.

It’s a reality that this country still faces enormous challenges to resolving its racial divisions that have been centuries in the making. Changing hearts and minds has proven to be a monumental task.

There are emerging glimmers that even some top Republican officials are growing weary of some of their president’s assaults on democracy.

WASHINGTON - Witnessing a new low for the Trump presidency means it is a day of the week ending in "y." But sometimes an offense is particularly symbolic of the man and the moment.

It’s a little known fact that Rosa Parks worked with the NAACP as a sexual assault investigator.

George Floyd’s name is now known around the globe; his death has sparked protests from Berlin to Mexico City. The extraordinary cruelty of his killing has shocked the world. But his death has resonated so widely not because it was exceptional, but because it was not. Not exceptional in the U…

Ever since China announced plans to impose a sweeping new national-security law on Hong Kong, Western democracies have struggled to come up with an effective response. Such steps as ending the former British colony’s special trade privileges, as the U.S. has suggested, are likelier to hurt o…

On April 4 1968, Martin Luther King Jr phoned a local pastor with the title of his Sunday sermon: “Why America May Go to Hell.” The civil rights leader was shot dead before he could address the parishioners of Ebenezer Baptist church in Atlanta. Over the next few weeks the United States foun…

At a time America urgently needs a great president to unite the people, its president is intent on driving them apart.

In times of turmoil, the nation looks to the Oval Office.

Declaring he was “your president of law and order,” President Trump on Monday said he was prepared to deploy U.S. troops to end the violence and vandalism that has accompanied a nationwide protest against police brutality.

A Minneapolis police officer, who was filmed kneeling on George Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes until the life left his body, has been fired, arrested and charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter. That is a step toward justice. Those who take a life should face a jury of their …

‘The reason that Black people are in the streets,” the acclaimed American writer James Baldwin said in 1968, “has to do with the lives they are forced to lead in this country. And they are forced to lead these lives by the indifference and the apathy and a certain kind of ignorance, a very w…

Jeff Sessions is in a surreal place. He spent 20 years as a senator from Alabama, followed by 21 months as U.S. Attorney General, and now he is in a tightly competitive race to win back his old Senate seat. He was the first important national figure in government to endorse candidate Donald …

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Minneapolis police arrived at the scene of an alleged theft on Monday, and there they failed the most basic tests of public service and humanity. At least one of the officers committed a horrifying act of abuse against an unarmed man as another stood by callously – and allowed the brutality …

An effective unemployment-insurance system plays an essential role in a healthy economy. It helps people get by when they lose jobs. It improves productivity by supporting workers while they find the best match for their skills. It mitigates recessions by maintaining consumers’ spending powe…

Another African-American man has died during an encounter with Minneapolis police, leaving a community to process more outrage and heartbreak.